Spacewalkers fling satellites, add bird tracker
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Spacewalking cosmonauts flung tiny satellites into orbit Wednesday and set up an antenna for tracking birds on Earth.
Russian Sergey Prokopyev released four research satellites by hand. The first mini satellite tumbled away as the International Space Station soared about 415 kilometres above Illinois. By the time the fourth one was on its way 14 minutes later, the station was almost to Spain. Two were the size of a tissue box, while the other two were longer.
With that quickly behind them, Prokopyev and Oleg Artemyev spent the next several hours installing the antenna for a German-led, animal-tracking project known as Icarus, short for International Co-operation for Animal Research Using Space.
The space station is an ideal perch for the antenna, compared with a typical satellite, said project director Martin Wikelski of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany.
The project will start out tracking blackbirds and turtle doves already outfitted with small GPS tags, then move on to other songbirds, fruit bats and bigger wildlife.
Wikelski said researchers have ear tags for big mammals such as gazelle, jaguars, camels and elephants, as well as leg-band tags for larger birds such as storks.
Researchers hope to learn more about where the animals migrate, how they grow up and how they can survive.